CMT Blog: Archive

Michael Symon is the chef and owner of critically acclaimed Lola and Lolita restaurants in Cleveland, but he's best known as one of Food Network's Iron Chefs and host of the network's show Dinner: Impossible. It's the latter job that paired him with country star James Otto. Yesterday, James told his side of the adventure. This is Chef Symon's take on cooking with James.

I never know what I'm getting into for each episode of Dinner: Impossible, and this trip to Nashville was no different.

They brought me to the Grand Ole Opry and told me there's going to be a concert that evening with James Otto and Charlie Daniels, and Charlie wanted us to cook a meal based on "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" to feed 350 of his select guests.

Now, I'm more of a rock-n-roll kind of guy, but I love music. I love Hank Williams Jr., I love Charlie Daniels, I like the things James is doing, I love Johnny Cash ... so I don't know if James had heard of me, but I'd heard of him.

Meeting James was pretty intimidating since he's so tall! I have a 6-foot- 3 father, and he makes my father look short. James is a huge man. I figured he could probably kill me with his bare hands, so what's the danger of giving him a knife?

We tried to keep the menu to very Southern-style food, but the hiccup throughout the whole challenge is that the only real food reference in "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" is chicken, and we had to shop at the resort (Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Resort) and the only chicken they had was boneless, skinless chicken breast. There's not a Southern man in the world that's going to want to eat boneless, skinless chicken breast. So we opted out of the chicken and got these beautiful pork shanks that we braised -- a spicy braised pork shank -- and paired with them some grits and other things.

My biggest concern was James had to perform that night and I didn't want him to cut himself, so we kind of kept an eye on him with the knife, gave him some basic knife skills and went from there.

I put him right in front of me to make sure he was doing well because there are two ways to do things: the wrong way and my way. I kind of took the attitude if he was teaching me how to sing, I wasn't going to have an opinion, so if I'm teaching him how to cook, then he's not allowed to have a major opinion either.

I had James do some slicing and dicing and leaned on him for things that he thought would be popular in Tennessee and that people there would like to eat. Everything I asked him to do, he did without blinking an eye. He just went out and did it. He kept saying, "I can't cook, I can't cook," but once we got into the kitchen, he was great.

I think the key to being a good cook is you have to love food. You have to love to eat. And he's a guy that really appreciates great food. If you like great food, you're 80 percent of the way there. And he has a passion for it, and I would completely trust him cooking for me.

For me, one of the best things about this challenge was that I got to stand on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry with James. My son is a musician, so to stand on that stage in the circle from the original Grand Ole Opry took my breath away.

You can watch Chef Michael Symon and James Otto on Dinner: Impossible Wednesday (Aug. 27) at 10pm ET/PT on Food Network.